Saturday, April 11, 2009

This is a short update to keep you posted on our activity. After sending out the update last week of our rejection by Timothy Morrison to consider Airleaf's action a "crime" in Indiana, 128 of you responded to date that you will sign a petition to request the reversal of that decision, and 53 of you sent me a notice that you emailed Mr. Morrison to voice your objection to his decision. If you haven't had time to respond to the petition, please drop me a note as soon as possible so I can add you to our list. If you haven't sent your message to Mr. Morrison, please take a moment to do so at USAINS.Webmaster@usdoj.gov, The more of us who stand up, the more powerful our case will be.

On Tuesday, I will send out a press release to the Indiana news media about our case. I will announce the launching of my new site www.IndianaWelcomesCrooks.com which you can now click into and read. I have also had our Airleaf Victims website with your stories redesigned to look more professional. You can view it at www.AirleafVictims.com. I want to make sure that our message is heard loud and clear.

Last Sunday, I sent a letter to the 83 state legislators in Indiana. In addition, I sent the letter to the Governor's office, the Senators and Congressmen. It stated:

Dear (Indiana Legislator),

My name is Bonnie Kaye. I am the organizer of the Airleaf Victims group which can be seen at www.AirleafVictims.com. There are over 600 authors in our organization who were defrauded of over 2 million dollars by Airleaf Publishing in Martinsville, Indiana until we forced it to close through stopping its cash flow by exposing its fraudulence. In spite of our pleas for help to the agencies in your state which are there to protect people from consumer fraud, no action was taken to stop the company from operating until after the fact. Last May, your Attorney General handed down a half-million dollar judgment against the company from a cohort of 120 of our authors. The owner, Carl Lau, is declaring bankruptcy, so there will be no restitution. We pushed for retribution by requesting this man be punished for criminal charges. For 18 months, I worked with the FBI and Postal authorities presenting case after case of criminal action on Airleaf's part. On Friday, I was informed by the FBI that your U.S. Attorney, Timothy Morrison, has decided that our case doesn’t constitute “criminal action” in Indiana. My members, many of whom are elderly and disabled victims, are in shock.

The FBI and Postal authorities presented hard core evidence of criminal action by this company. Mr. Morrison has decided it’s not worth his time to pursue the case. This is unacceptable to our authors from this country and other countries who are victims of one of the largest predatory publishing scams in American history.

I am appealing to you as an elected official of Indiana to ask Mr. Morrison to reverse his decision. I will be coming to Indiana from my home in Philadelphia with other victims in June to present him with petitions from our group. As a result of the inaction of your state government, another company, Jones Harvest Publishing in Bloomington, IN, has set up a second publishing scam and has robbed hundreds of authors of their money. Brien Jones, the owner, was the Executive Vice President of Airleaf who left in 2007 to set up his own scam. You can see that site at www.JonesHarvestFraudVictims.com. This decision by Mr. Morrison only allows crooks like this to keep stealing money from honest and vulnerable people.

We plan to make this a national publicity campaign if we can’t find justice in your state. Please help us. Some of our authors are your constituents, and you owe it to them to fight against this injustice.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at Bonkaye@aol.com or call me at 215-288-6959.

Sincerely,

Bonnie Kaye, M.Ed.

Out of the 89 letters I sent, two state reps responded to date telling me that it is not the job of the state senators and representatives to handle this. I guess in Indiana, it isn't anyone's job.

I wrote a letter to my predatory publishing guru, Victoria Strauss, of Writer Beware! asking for her support in having other authors send petitions to express their support of our case. Victoria was very gracious, as always, in printing my letter in her blog yesterday. You can read it here:

Writer Beware Blogs!

I have had six authors respond already stating they will sign petitions to support us. Therefore, I will have a second petition for authors who are not part of our Airleaf group who want to support our cause. When I speak in Connecticut next month about predatory publishing at the CAPA University event, I will ask authors to sign the support petition.

I believe that if we stand up together, we can make a change in this wrongful decision. If we don't stand up, we will be known as "victims" in history. If we fight back, we will be remembered as "victors." We are a group of winners--and we will show this to the government of Indiana.